LASSO for Stochastic Frontier Models with Many Efficient Firms

Abstract We apply the adaptive LASSO to select a set of maximally efficient firms in the panel fixed-effect stochastic frontier model. The adaptively weighted L 1 penalty with sign restrictions allows simultaneous selection of a group of maximally efficient firms and estimation of firm-level inefficiency parameters with a faster rate of convergence than least squares dummy variable estimators. Our estimator possesses the oracle property. We propose a tuning parameter selection criterion and an efficient optimization algorithm based on coordinate descent. We apply the method to estimate a group of efficient police officers who are best at detecting contraband in motor vehicle stops (i.e., search efficiency) in Syracuse, NY.